Description

Somewhere in the universe, there is a beautiful planet called Twinsun. It is populated by four different races, which have been living in peace and prosperity, until a mad scientist Dr. Funfrock of the Quetch (human-like) race used his newly invented cloning and teleporting techniques to create an army of fearsome soldiers and become the planet's dictator. Twinsun's inhabitants have not lost hope, placing their faith in the old legend about the benevolent goddess Sendell who would save the world. However, Dr. Funfrock totalitarian regime forbade displaying any images of the goddess and her worship.

A young Quetch named Twinsen was just a regular fellow until he had a dream, which surprisingly involved the outlawed goddess. It seems that Dr. Funfrock was no stranger to mind control; in his opinion, even dreaming of the goddess was illegal, and he promptly ordered to put the perpetrator in prison. Now the unlikely hero must find a way to escape and eventually save his planet from the clutches of its insane ruler.

Little Big Adventure (Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure in the US) is primarily an adventure game with strong action elements. As usually in adventure games, the hero must talk to other characters, and collect and use objects. However, not all the problems have to be solved with dialogue and item manipulation. The player can activate four different behavior modes for Twinsen: Normal, Aggressive, Athletic, and Discreet. The first is used for peaceful exploration and conversations; Aggressive mode allows Twinsen to punch and kick other characters; Athletic mode must be applied when it becomes necessary to run quickly and jump; Discreet effectively puts Twinsen in a stealth mode, making it possible to sneak by hostile character unnoticed. While activation of a particular mode is often required to solve a problem, many situations can be dealt with in different ways.

The game universe is rendered with characters in full 3D, while the environment uses isometric graphic tiles. The CD version (which was released earlier than the floppy one) features pre-rendered animated cutscenes, audio music and speech; all these features are absent from the floppy disk version.

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Development

Originally, this game was was meant to be made for the SNES, with the use of the Super FX chip.
Also, in early previews, the was mention of Twinsen being able to drive vehicles. The final version of the game lack this feature but it is included in the sequel.

LBAWin

It is not easy to get to run this game on modern PC's. For different reasons the game has its difficulties with DosBox. The best way to play it would be LBAWin, a Windows port created by a former Adeline programmer. It requires the original DOS disc to play and can be downloaded here.

Technology

The programmers used some tricks in this game: The game's soundtrack is made of both redbook audio and midi syntesizer. The video mode is SVGA for most of the game, but if you zoom, the game uses standard VGA.

Awards

Computer Gaming World

May 1995 (Issue #130) – Adventure of the Year

GameStar (Germany)

Issue 12/1999 - #71 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking